Memories (Restored Classics to Go Edition)

Lord Redesdale's memoir opens with diplomacy under pressure, as a mission to survey Japan's western coast and secure a trade port turns into uneasy negotiation with the powerful clan of Kaga. When talks falter, he and Satow are sent inland on a route few foreigners have dared to attempt, beginning a journey through a country poised between ancient custom and foreign intrusion. The road carries them past coast, lagoon, mountain, and forest, through inns and tea-houses, amid armed escorts, wary officials, and the quiet courtesy of ordinary people. A lyrical digression on the harp of Suma—where exile, music, and love transform loss into restoration—deepens the memoir's mood of romance and impermanence. The travelers press on through Kaga and into more guarded Echizen, then face a midnight struggle at Kusatsu over the road to Ōtsu, narrowly escaping a murder plot before reaching Osaka after eleven dangerous days. Political tension, anti-foreign hostility, and the murder of sailors from H.M.S. Icarus sharpen the sense of peril, even as figures like Gotō Shōjirō and the Prince of Awa reveal Japan's uncertain path toward reform. The scene then shifts to the American prairie, where buffalo hunting, mirages, storms, and frontier conflict with Native Americans expose a harsher world of danger, endurance, and uneasy conquest. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.